Intermittent moments of mild amusement ensue.

As Roscoe's parents, Margaret Avery and James Earl Jones emerge with drawers undropped and dignity intact.

Labaki, who studied filmmaking in Lebanon and France, has a deft touch and nice instincts.

What ensues may be predictable, but the slapstick performances of Rudd and Bell are anything but. They court, they spark, and a few times they catch comic fire.

Apart from its intriguing religious implications, the film is also a compelling look at the family, community and congregational pillars that support Lior.

With its first-person-shooter perspective and gun-andrun narrative, this one’s for the PlayStation crowd. It’s not a movie. It’s an adrenaline pump and purveyor of raw carnage.

An abhorrent cyberthriller starring a compelling Diane Lane.

A smart and creepy fable in which the myth of the vagina dentata - yes, a toothed sex organ - is transplanted to teen suburbia.

There's not a believable character, nor line of convincing dialogue to be found.

Much scampering, yelling, quaking and crying is required of the actors, and they acquit themselves well enough, even with oozing fake wounds and prop rebars piercing their shoulder blades.

A likable and completely dispensable heist film starring two of the deftest comedians working (Keaton and Latifah), the film from Callie Khouri is itself an American retread of the British caper telefilm "Hot Money."

Much as I gnashed my teeth during 27 Dresses, I genuinely enjoyed the warmth of Heigl's and Marsden's confident ease. While both might be a few minutes past their star-is-born moment, these troupers with more than 30 years of professional work between them have never shone so brightly. It may sound contradictory, but loved them, hated IT.

So disturbing, on so many levels.

Drawing comparisons to "The Wire" may be unfair, but taken on its own, this anemic vehicle for Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan to mug and jive through is just weak, weak stuff.

In its first half, Honeydripper trickles. In its second, it really flows.

Bayona's moves are deft, the atmosphere oozes with anxiety and grief, but the big payoff - like the big payoff in The Sixth Sense, another film The Orphanage has more than a bit in common with - never comes.

Just a few barrels short of being a masterpiece.

Nothing wrong about a movie that says, Stop and smell the roses. Now, if only director Rob Reiner hadn't rubbed our noses in a bouquet of plastic blooms.

A triumph. Unapologetically old-school, in both the literal and metaphorical meanings of the term, Debaters overlays the story of social underdogs onto the familiar template of the stand-and-deliver saga, the staple of sports inspirationals like "Rocky," "Invincible" and "The Karate Kid."

Persepolis, the superb film based on Satrapi's graphic memoirs of the same name, is a riveting odyssey in pictures and words. It's unlike any journal you've read or any animated movie you've seen.

Emily Watson, looking at home in her '40s frocks, plays Angus' mother - coping not only with her son's obsession with what she believes to be an imaginary friend, but also with her own worry and grief about her husband at war.

Like Sorkin's D.C.-set TV series, "West Wing," his script for Charlie Wilson's War is full of rapid-fire badinage, with movers and shakers moving smart and shaking snappy as a squad of aides trot along behind, briefcases and coffee cups in tow. A decade - not to mention a war - never went by so quickly.

Like a grade-school version of an Indiana Jones adventure.

Harry Connick Jr. acquits himself best of the lot.

With Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Tim Burton gives new meaning to the term "director's cut."

While it might not have the laughs-per-minute ratio of the "Naked Gun" movies (but then, what does?), it is a reliable titter generator for boomers and their echo boomlings.

Filled with breathtaking shots of crazed nutballs on skis plummeting down pitched peaks at high speed, Steep is a visually exhilarating sports documentary that is also more than a little exasperating.

Ultimately, the values and the CGI are good, but the acting is broad and the chipmunks aren't really differentiated. What happened to Alvin, the rodent counterpart of Dennis the Menace? Was he declawed in the translation to CGI?